Machine Learning (ML) has been a foundational topic in artificial intelligence (AI), providing both theoretical groundwork and practical tools for its exciting advancements. From ResNet for visual recognition to Transformer for vision-language alignment, the AI models have achieved superior capability to humans. Furthermore, the scaling law has enabled AI to initially develop general intelligence, as demonstrated by Large Language Models (LLMs). To this stage, AI has had an enormous influence on society and yet still keeps shaping the future for humanity. However, distribution shift remains a persistent ``Achilles' heel'', fundamentally limiting the reliability and general usefulness of ML systems. Moreover, generalization under distribution shift would also cause trust issues for AIs. Motivated by these challenges, my research focuses on \textit{Trustworthy Machine Learning under Distribution Shifts}, with the goal of expanding AI's robustness, versatility, as well as its responsibility and reliability. We carefully study the three common distribution shifts into: (1) Perturbation Shift, (2) Domain Shift, and (3) Modality Shift. For all scenarios, we also rigorously investigate trustworthiness via three aspects: (1) Robustness, (2) Explainability, and (3) Adaptability. Based on these dimensions, we propose effective solutions and fundamental insights, meanwhile aiming to enhance the critical ML problems, such as efficiency, adaptability, and safety.
翻译:机器学习(ML)一直是人工智能(AI)的基础性课题,为其令人振奋的进展提供了理论基础和实用工具。从用于视觉识别的ResNet到用于视觉-语言对齐的Transformer,AI模型已具备超越人类的能力。此外,缩放定律使AI得以初步发展出通用智能,正如大型语言模型(LLMs)所展示的那样。至此,AI已对社会产生巨大影响,并持续塑造着人类的未来。然而,分布偏移仍然是一个顽固的“阿喀琉斯之踵”,从根本上限制了ML系统的可靠性和普适有用性。此外,分布偏移下的泛化问题也会引发对AI的信任危机。受这些挑战驱动,我的研究聚焦于\textit{分布偏移下的可信机器学习},旨在扩展AI的鲁棒性、多功能性,以及其责任与可靠性。我们细致地将三种常见的分布偏移归类为:(1)扰动偏移,(2)域偏移,以及(3)模态偏移。针对所有场景,我们还从三个方面严格审视可信度:(1)鲁棒性,(2)可解释性,以及(3)适应性。基于这些维度,我们提出了有效的解决方案和基础性见解,同时致力于提升效率、适应性和安全性等关键ML问题。